Glorify God with Our Bodies

Everyone thinks they could lose a few pounds. Most people talk about doing something about it and a few go crazy and make it an obsession. When you think about it, we give a lot of time and thought to ourselves. We treat our bodies as a temple, but the right god is not at the center. We need to glorify God with our bodies, as a temple of the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians‬ ‭6:19-20‬

“Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.”

It’s all vanity

You would have to search hard in the first century of the church to find people more vain than the Corinthians. They were all about image and that included how your body looked. They held annual athletic games similar to the Olympics which started right down the road in Athens. If you weren’t appealing to look at or entertaining to listen to, they didn’t give you much time. So the people of that city spent a lot of time making themselves look just right. 

Paul comes against this and tells us that we are a temple of the Holy Spirit. We aren’t supposed to worship our bodies, but instead, we are to be a vessel that the Holy Spirit can reside. We are now our own, which means that when we surrender our lives to Christ, we become his. He bought us with a price, so we need to glorify God with our bodies. We don’t do that through a chiseled physique, but with a servants mentality.

Be Outward Focused

There is nothing wrong with being in shape. It gives us energy, and we feel better, but when it becomes our primary focus, we lose sight of who we are supposed to worship. Self-worship is inward focused. A temple is where the presence of God can reside, and we need to prepare ourselves so that the Holy Spirit can work in us. When we glorify God with our bodies, we increase the light to those who are lost.

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